Snow leopard disable iSight if login not active

[chucken]

I upgraded to snowleopard last night and now the built-in iSight disables when I return to the login screen, though the network cams still work. I assume it's a security "upgrade"

Is there any way to fix this?

[Jay]

What do you mean when you say the built-in iSight disables?

 Is the iSight in the Video dropdown list in iCamSource? If not, another program may be using it.  Quit all other programs that may be accessing the webcam.  Also, make sure that iCamSource isn't already running.

Is the Video dropdown list disabled (grayed out)?  If so, hit the Stop button, then the dropdown list should be enabled.

[chucken]

I have a keyboard now and can describe in a bit more detail. Up until I installed Snow Leopard, I could start 3 instances of icamsource (one built-in ISight, and two forwarding network based webcams). I could then go to the Login window - not actually logged out though, and the video/audio would continue to work.

With SL, as soon as I click Login Window... the green light on the built-in iSight goes out. The icam client on my ipod touch continues to see the webcams, but the built-in iSight if offline. /var/log/system.log shows:

Sep 30 13:37:52 Bigmac-4 /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow[264]: Login Window Application Started
Sep 30 13:37:55 Bigmac-4 loginwindow[264]: Login Window Started Security Agent
Sep 30 13:37:57 Bigmac-4 UserEventAgent[273]: Error loading /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio:  dlopen(/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio, 262): no suitable image found.  Did find:\n   /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin/Contents/MacOS/DVCPROHDAudio: no matching architecture in universal wrapper
Sep 30 13:37:57 Bigmac-4 UserEventAgent[273]: Cannot find function pointer NewPlugIn for factory C5A4CE5B-0BB8-11D8-9D75-0003939615B6 in CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x1002093a0 </Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/DVCPROHDAudio.plugin> (bundle, not loaded)
Sep 30 13:38:05 Bigmac-4 SecurityAgent[271]: NSSecureTextFieldCell detected a field editor ((null)) that is not a NSTextView subclass designed to work with the cell. Ignoring...

I'm guessing the Login Window Security Agent now disables the built-in cameras when you're not actively owning the display.

[Jay]

I've been able to replicate it on my Mac.  I'm guessing that you're right, and Snow Leopard just handles this differently than Leopard does.  I didn't find anything from a quick Google search, but this would be pretty new and it wouldn't affect many people, so that's not surprising.  There isn't really anything we can do about it in the iCamSource code.

[Zhe Wiz]

Has this problem ever been resolved?  Or is there no resolution and that's "just the way it is?"

I'm having the same issue.

Thanks,

Zhe Wiz

[Stefan]

We have not been able to come up with any sort of workaround, unfortunately. I believe that is just the way it is with Snow Leopard.

[Ztrejfer]

Nowadays most Macs run with Snow Leopard.

So...

I have the same issue as the other participants: it's not possible to use iCam via iSight once you're logged out of OS X 10.6.

In my opinion it's not that smart - at all. I wish to use my iMac i5 as surveillance in my apartment when I'm out, that's why I bought iCam - and now you tell me you're not able to fix this?

Surely!

[Jay]

Unfortunately, we have no control over this behavior.  It's a restriction imposed by the Snow Leopard operating system.